New Ideas is a twice-monthly series featuring men with — no surprise here — new ideas. Whether they’re providing fresh perspectives on fitness or style, exploring social behaviors or challenging popular theories, these guys are the best and the brightest in their fields. Even better, they all have interesting things to say. You might agree with them. You might not. There’s only one way to find out.

In 2009, Levi Felix was working and playing so hard that he ended up in the hospital. For more than two years, the 24-year-old had put in up to 80-hour work weeks at a cool tech startup in Los Angeles. When he went to the hospital with what he thought was food poisoning, what they found was much more serious: an esophageal tear and severe internal bleeding, which kept him in the ICU for three days. When the doctor let him out, he told Felix to cut out cigarettes, coffee and spicy food — and, most importantly, to slow down. “That got me thinking about what it means to be so connected to digital technology that I was so disconnected with myself and my own body,” he says over the phone from Oakland, Calif.

Later that year, Felix and his girlfriend, Brooke Dean, packed their bags for what was supposed to be a two-month sabbatical. Nearly two years later, they came back, reinvigorated after traveling the world and learning things like meditation and yoga. “When I got back from traveling, my girlfriend and I looked around and noticed that every restaurant, every bar, every café, every bus, every subway was filled with people looking at their screens. No one was looking at each other or talking to each other.” They knew something had to change and were ready to lead the way. In 2012, they founded Digital Detox, an organization dedicated to teaching our generation “how to create more mindful, meaningful and balanced lives, both online and off.”

Among other initiatives, last year Digital Detox hosted its first Camp Grounded, a summer camp for adults to help people disconnect from digital technology, to learn how to slow down and to reconnect with the people around them. This June, the organization will host three summer camps in California. Campers will trade in their phones and computers, take on a nickname — no one goes by real names at Camp Grounded — and tackle activities such as hiking, solar carving, dance class, song writing and “sneaking out.” Can’t make it to summer camp? Don’t worry. We chatted with Felix all about how guys can create healthier habits with digital technologies. As a starting point, if you’re reading this on your phone while you’re in the bathroom, stop doing that. He’ll tell you why.

Michelle Magnan: With Digital Detox, you’re not asking people to ditch technology, but you are asking them to reevaluate how they interact with it. It’s a refreshing thought, and one I think a lot of people would embrace — but have you encountered resistance from guys when you’ve talk about it?

Levi Felix: For the most part, everyone is like, "Yeah, that resonates with me. Thank you for talking about this." It’s the elephant in the global room. People come to camp fully ready, like, "Take my phone and computer. I want to be free for a few days."

You’re exactly right — it’s not about ditching technology or being away from it, it’s just about finding balance. The first step to balance is to take a step back. If you’re a runner and your knee hurts and you just keep running, you’re not sure if it’s the running that’s doing it. If you take a few days off, you might find out it’s the shoe that you’re wearing that’s hurting your knee. It’s like diet. If you don’t know what you’re allergic to, you take foods away. Same thing with digital technology: You don’t know where to peel things back until you start peeling them back.

MM: You say that our generation feels the need to always be available, which leads to people being addicted to their phones. How does someone break the phone-addiction habit?

LF: It’s about setting parameters. Like in the workplace — I don’t check work emails until 9:00 a.m. and I don’t check them after 6:00 p.m. You can tell friends and family, "Don’t expect to reach me by phone during mealtimes and after 8:00 p.m. at night. I’ll have my phone off." You can set those parameters with people in your life. Also, you can disable all push notifications on your phone. Take most of the apps you have on your phone off of your phone. That way, if someone likes something on Facebook or Instagram or retweets you on Twitter, you’re not getting a little beep. Every time you get one of those push notifications, you have a little release of dopamine in your brain that tells you, "Hey, go seek that reward! What was that?" You literally have a behavior impulse from your brain to say, "Open that phone." Fighting that is hard. If you just remove that temptation — they call it a “cue” in psychology — you’re more likely to behave the way you want. It’s like a diet. If you’re trying to lose weight, don’t leave chocolate chip cookies on the counter just to walk by and graze. Save them for moments when you want them. I’m not saying those things are bad, but everything in moderation.